The exhibition Aquaria – Or the Illusion of a Boxed Sea reflects on the possibilities and new questions that we could come up against when rethinking our relationship with the marine world. Aquaria are devices that organise and represent marine life; they are complex systems which, in the paradigm of modernity and urbanisation, embody the transformation of nature into culture, with the help of of technology and capital. This separation of culture as an entity divorced from the organic-natural world stems from scientific and rational attempts to categorise and organise. However, constructs that divide culture from nature are no longer convincing in the context of a new climate regime.

Curated by Angela Rui, the exhibition path unfolds through 11 installations by artists, designers, filmmakers, composers and researchers, each offering different points of view to emphasise how the ways of understanding the marine environment were once envisaged and how they should be reconsidered today.